13 comments:

Full refrigerators, plastic inside and outside, old velvet makes way for black leather jackets dappled with moonlight: this is the green absence of winter... of pre-paid ballet... and the move back-in with mom and dad really isn't that bad, despite the parental unit asking and asking, "What're you planning?"

They're all around us now, and yes, it's impossible to avoid the sobering thought that, yes, they are the future.

Then again, it's also not easy to avoid the less sober thought that, hey, maybe the best thing for these kids, who appear SO badly in need of a lie-down, would be to spend a Saturday night on the streets of Cardiff.

But let's be fair to them, as they've taken over the world and therefore we must want them to... well, not exactly to LIKE us -- who's kidding whom? Let's face it, we're strictly for blank-check-signing, and then it's straight into the retro-gear bin -- but to permit us to wheeze and gasp through our tiresome final throes...

Still, just ever so meekly asking, what recycled style trends will there be left to rummage-through when all the litter and paraphernalia of all those benighted and superseded generations of upright bipeds is no longer there to acquire by the simple trick of simulated proximity?

Not that Game of Thrones isn't the most intellectually stimulating thing ever to tease devolution that next step down the ladder. But just saying.

They’re animals just as we are animals,supernumeraries like ourselves,existing in a world of too many people and too few jobs;in a world of scarcitytaught to be consumers of the not-really-necessaryto work, obey, buy stuffto drink the kool aid to compete with machinesthat perform the same mindless routines at a better price-point and that never demand unionsor sick days that never ask for enough money to live on;which is the same thing . . . as they have been so egregiously lied to . . . as just enough money to keep buying the same never-really-necessary crapand so on

I never thought I would think well of the concept of self-loathing, but in contrast to generational self approval, at least it offers the opportunity and a starting point for considering self-improvement. This is funny, very well-observed and painful. Yesterday I read an odd story (I forget whether it emanated from the US or the UK) about pre-schoolers and kindergarteners lacking the skills to put together toy blocks in the usual fashion, but being dexterous at iPad and iPhone swiping. I wish I knew what to say, but having been on the receiving end of some irritating put-downs from millenials and their immediate predecessors (I never could properly identify or distinguish between Generation X and Y), I really don't. I guess my daughter is a millennial, but she's pretty much on the ball and avoids most of the stereotypes and cliches. Now, if she could only avoid the irritating put-downs, but I suppose that comes with the territory. Curtis

A tall order for a young sportswoman, but what we're all about here is aiming high. That and trying not to press our backsides into the rubbish bin TOO hard, in like, yknow, a non-ecologically-sound way.

All I can say, in addition of course to all I have already said, is, things have come a long way down since the time it was possible for parents to communicate meaningfully with their adolescent children... over the hearthside, or the tv dinner, as the warm, emotionally-securing case may have been.